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I like driving too, but don't focus too narrowly on roads. I think you're getting benefit from more than < 1% of taxation. Public education helps everyone. Rese

I like driving too, but don't focus too narrowly on roads. I think you're getting benefit from more than < 1% of taxation. Public education helps everyone. Research helps everyone. Having a criminal justice system helps everyone (well, the non-violent drug offenders would disagree). Having a strong civil legal system helps everyone. Meat inspectors help everyone. Financial regulators help everyone. You could even say that knowing that we don't have senior citizens starving and dying in the streets as helping everyone. I like knowing that I live in a society that takes care of many of the less fortunate. I'm not saying that government is good at solving every problem, but focusing on just roads, wars, and old people is very narrow.

startuprules 17y ago
I would dare to say that our government sucks at solving any problem. A few examples: U.S. Teens Trail Peers Around World on Math-Science Test http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/04/AR2007120400730.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12... U.S. prison population dwarfs that of other nations http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23prison.12253738.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23pri... Lehman Cooked The Books Prior To Collapse; Geithner And NY Fed Implicated http://thelibertyguardian.com/2010/03/lehman-cooked-the-books-prior-to-collapse-geithner-and-ny-fed-implicated/ http://thelibertyguardian.com/2010/03/lehman-cooked-the-book... Let's face it; our government is setup to help the big corporations.
- MartinCron 17y ago
  Oh, come on, that's just confirmation bias. Our government solves lots of problems. A few counter-examples: People love Medicare. It helps keep old sick people from financial ruin. That's a good thing. Lots of banks have failed in the last few years, but government-run programs (FDIC, mostly) keep the fallout from damaging citizens. The United States is home to many world-class research institutions, many of which receive government grants. Bernie Madoff was running a huge ponzi scheme to defraud investors, but was eventually caught, by the government, and sent to prison. The military and US AID have helped save lives and assist in reconstruction of post-earthquake Haiti. FAA regulators have made air travel extremely safe. NHTSA and other regulators have improved the safety of cars and saved countless lives. The Parks department has conserved millions of acres of winderness for people to enjoy for generations. The Endangered Species Act has literally saved species from disappearing from the planet. The National Science Foundation helps fund RadioLab, the best thing on the radio.
  - grandalf 17y ago
    Uh, if the banks had been allowed to fail the FDIC would have been wiped out. If GM and Chrysler had been allowed to fail the PBGC would have been wiped out. Fannie and Freddie were wiped out and would incidentally have failed due to investor flight in the early 2000s if they had submitted financials to investors like other firms (meanwhile the CEOs got very rich). BTW off the books entities are what everyone hated about Enron... our GSEs are the exact same scheme. Bernie Madoff's daughter was married to a SEC official and in spite of being reported to the SEC multiple times over the years his fund was not investigated. Only the biggest financial crisis since the great depression made his scheme unsustainable, at which point the fraud was obvious, and he was used as a scapegoat for the crisis itself... as if his fund caused it! Some of the items on your list are good services that are provided by government... but if you look at the government budget they make up (at best) a few percent.
    - MartinCron 17y ago
      I was responding to a preposterous absolutist comment that government sucks at solving any problems. This preposterous absolutist comment was backed up with a small handful of examples solved poorly by government, so I put up a few counter-examples. You can counter some of my counters and we could go back and forth all day, but that doesn't help anyone. The fact that government can provide multiple valuable services for just a fraction of overall budget each isn't proof of anything. There's a very trendy and shallow mindset these days that government is absolutely terrible at absolutely everything. The truth is more nuanced than that.
      - grandalf 17y ago
        That may be true, but just as the smallest scientific theory is usually the best one, the smallest government intervention is usually the best. This entails that a local program is usually going to be better than a state program, which is usually going to be better than a Federal program at addressing needs.
  - protomyth 17y ago
    In this specific area, the gov is treaty-obligated to provide health care to Native Americans. They have failed miserably - http://www.reznetnews.org/article/indian-health-cares-broken-promises-35270 http://www.reznetnews.org/article/indian-health-cares-broken... - the sad part is that those stories in the article are the typical and not even the worst.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
muhfuhkuh 17y ago
I always have and always will take umbrage with how people downplay the government's role in ameliorating the lives of people. Case in point, can anyone really deny that the overwhelming majority of the cures and vaccines for deadly afflictions that have plagued the US (and the planet, for that matter) have been developed in a university or non-profit lab under the funding, technology transfer, and/or support of governments (in the US case, the NIH)? Polio (Salk), TB vaccine (Calmette), the list goes on. Hell, even Norman Borlaug helped eradicate famine in several parts of the 3rd world under the encouragement (and part-funding) of the Roosevelt administration. You're right that it's not just about socialized interstates and bunker bombs. It's truly about doing those things that just _cannot_ fit on any sane balance sheet trading on Wall Street (or if they tried, investors would truly revolt).
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- grandalf 17y ago
  Ok so you've successfully argued for 1% of the Federal budget and 5% of state budgets. I hope you're not going to stop your thought process there.
  - jballanc 17y ago
    Well, ya gotta be able to kill people! That accounts for another 23%...
  - muhfuhkuh 17y ago
    Manned space missions that go more than "just passed the exosphere", making sure people with the pre-existing condition called "old" and "dirt poor" and the extra-duper fun combination "old and dirt poor" are actually not left to die on the streets with a simple infection, networks of massive national laboratories whose prime mission is to secure technologies and advance science for one of the most technologically advanced and by far most innovative countries on earth (perhaps not in the adoption of personal electronics, but we surely laid the foundation for all innovation, not the least of which was von Neumann and his work with Eckert and Mauchly's ENIAC, the first programmed computer). Those labs take several billion a year each to operate, and have arguably single-handedly placed and kept the US at the forefront of technology for decades. I'm not going to pussy-foot around it, we spend 50% of our tax dollar on defense, and most of that into personnel and pure weapons r&d and manufacturing. It's a shame, but it's the truth. Just imagine if we could refocus those dollars elsewhere (in an ideal world, anyway), where would we be now? More importantly, why hasn't private industry come and done it for us?
grandalf 17y ago
As you'll notice in my comment I was not arguing against a social safety net. I was arguing against "paygo" social programs that will not be sustainable in the face of demographic change. I was not arguing against the criminal justice system either. And as you point out, nonviolent drug offender enforcement is a huge burden on society for a variety of reasons. Not only do I not want senior citizens starving and dying in the streets, I want to be sure that a senior citizen 50 years from now won't starve or die in the streets. Consider what congress has done to social security benefits over the past few decades. Right now the social security retirement age is OLDER than the average lifespan of African American men. Why are you defending this approach? People work hard for years and plan for retirement only to have the social security retirement age increased. If a private firm did this the CEO would end up in jail. Why are you defending this racket? If you're going to take by force 12.5% of someone's lifetime earnings (all most middle class people can afford to put away for retirement), you'd damn well better live up to the promise you made to him about what he'll get and when. You seem to think that taxes == good social programs. On the contrary, the current budget is full of unsustainable things that only exist to give a handout to one special interest group or another... everyone knows they aren't sustainable and that they exploit those paying in now, but there is a collective action problem (which, incidentally, you are helping to perpetuate). I've paid lots of money into social security... where has it gone? To fund the war in Iraq. Where will it be when I retire? By that time Soscial Security will probably have been cancelled or merged into the general budget or turned into a welfare program. I really don't understand why you would defend a regressive tax that allows congress to avoid having to be accountable for what it spends.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

startuprules 17y ago

I would dare to say that our government sucks at solving any problem. A few examples: U.S. Teens Trail Peers Around World on Math-Science Test http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/04/AR2007120400730.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12... U.S. prison population dwarfs that of other nations http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23prison.12253738.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23pri... Lehman Cooked The Books Prior To Collapse; Geithner And NY Fed Implicated http://thelibertyguardian.com/2010/03/lehman-cooked-the-books-prior-to-collapse-geithner-and-ny-fed-implicated/ http://thelibertyguardian.com/2010/03/lehman-cooked-the-book... Let's face it; our government is setup to help the big corporations.

MartinCron 17y ago
Oh, come on, that's just confirmation bias. Our government solves lots of problems. A few counter-examples: People love Medicare. It helps keep old sick people from financial ruin. That's a good thing. Lots of banks have failed in the last few years, but government-run programs (FDIC, mostly) keep the fallout from damaging citizens. The United States is home to many world-class research institutions, many of which receive government grants. Bernie Madoff was running a huge ponzi scheme to defraud investors, but was eventually caught, by the government, and sent to prison. The military and US AID have helped save lives and assist in reconstruction of post-earthquake Haiti. FAA regulators have made air travel extremely safe. NHTSA and other regulators have improved the safety of cars and saved countless lives. The Parks department has conserved millions of acres of winderness for people to enjoy for generations. The Endangered Species Act has literally saved species from disappearing from the planet. The National Science Foundation helps fund RadioLab, the best thing on the radio.
- grandalf 17y ago
  Uh, if the banks had been allowed to fail the FDIC would have been wiped out. If GM and Chrysler had been allowed to fail the PBGC would have been wiped out. Fannie and Freddie were wiped out and would incidentally have failed due to investor flight in the early 2000s if they had submitted financials to investors like other firms (meanwhile the CEOs got very rich). BTW off the books entities are what everyone hated about Enron... our GSEs are the exact same scheme. Bernie Madoff's daughter was married to a SEC official and in spite of being reported to the SEC multiple times over the years his fund was not investigated. Only the biggest financial crisis since the great depression made his scheme unsustainable, at which point the fraud was obvious, and he was used as a scapegoat for the crisis itself... as if his fund caused it! Some of the items on your list are good services that are provided by government... but if you look at the government budget they make up (at best) a few percent.
  - MartinCron 17y ago
    I was responding to a preposterous absolutist comment that government sucks at solving any problems. This preposterous absolutist comment was backed up with a small handful of examples solved poorly by government, so I put up a few counter-examples. You can counter some of my counters and we could go back and forth all day, but that doesn't help anyone. The fact that government can provide multiple valuable services for just a fraction of overall budget each isn't proof of anything. There's a very trendy and shallow mindset these days that government is absolutely terrible at absolutely everything. The truth is more nuanced than that.
    - grandalf 17y ago
      That may be true, but just as the smallest scientific theory is usually the best one, the smallest government intervention is usually the best. This entails that a local program is usually going to be better than a state program, which is usually going to be better than a Federal program at addressing needs.
- protomyth 17y ago
  In this specific area, the gov is treaty-obligated to provide health care to Native Americans. They have failed miserably - http://www.reznetnews.org/article/indian-health-cares-broken-promises-35270 http://www.reznetnews.org/article/indian-health-cares-broken... - the sad part is that those stories in the article are the typical and not even the worst.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

muhfuhkuh 17y ago

I always have and always will take umbrage with how people downplay the government's role in ameliorating the lives of people. Case in point, can anyone really deny that the overwhelming majority of the cures and vaccines for deadly afflictions that have plagued the US (and the planet, for that matter) have been developed in a university or non-profit lab under the funding, technology transfer, and/or support of governments (in the US case, the NIH)? Polio (Salk), TB vaccine (Calmette), the list goes on. Hell, even Norman Borlaug helped eradicate famine in several parts of the 3rd world under the encouragement (and part-funding) of the Roosevelt administration. You're right that it's not just about socialized interstates and bunker bombs. It's truly about doing those things that just _cannot_ fit on any sane balance sheet trading on Wall Street (or if they tried, investors would truly revolt).

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
grandalf 17y ago
Ok so you've successfully argued for 1% of the Federal budget and 5% of state budgets. I hope you're not going to stop your thought process there.
- jballanc 17y ago
  Well, ya gotta be able to kill people! That accounts for another 23%...
- muhfuhkuh 17y ago
  Manned space missions that go more than "just passed the exosphere", making sure people with the pre-existing condition called "old" and "dirt poor" and the extra-duper fun combination "old and dirt poor" are actually not left to die on the streets with a simple infection, networks of massive national laboratories whose prime mission is to secure technologies and advance science for one of the most technologically advanced and by far most innovative countries on earth (perhaps not in the adoption of personal electronics, but we surely laid the foundation for all innovation, not the least of which was von Neumann and his work with Eckert and Mauchly's ENIAC, the first programmed computer). Those labs take several billion a year each to operate, and have arguably single-handedly placed and kept the US at the forefront of technology for decades. I'm not going to pussy-foot around it, we spend 50% of our tax dollar on defense, and most of that into personnel and pure weapons r&d and manufacturing. It's a shame, but it's the truth. Just imagine if we could refocus those dollars elsewhere (in an ideal world, anyway), where would we be now? More importantly, why hasn't private industry come and done it for us?

grandalf 17y ago

As you'll notice in my comment I was not arguing against a social safety net. I was arguing against "paygo" social programs that will not be sustainable in the face of demographic change. I was not arguing against the criminal justice system either. And as you point out, nonviolent drug offender enforcement is a huge burden on society for a variety of reasons. Not only do I not want senior citizens starving and dying in the streets, I want to be sure that a senior citizen 50 years from now won't starve or die in the streets. Consider what congress has done to social security benefits over the past few decades. Right now the social security retirement age is OLDER than the average lifespan of African American men. Why are you defending this approach? People work hard for years and plan for retirement only to have the social security retirement age increased. If a private firm did this the CEO would end up in jail. Why are you defending this racket? If you're going to take by force 12.5% of someone's lifetime earnings (all most middle class people can afford to put away for retirement), you'd damn well better live up to the promise you made to him about what he'll get and when. You seem to think that taxes == good social programs. On the contrary, the current budget is full of unsustainable things that only exist to give a handout to one special interest group or another... everyone knows they aren't sustainable and that they exploit those paying in now, but there is a collective action problem (which, incidentally, you are helping to perpetuate). I've paid lots of money into social security... where has it gone? To fund the war in Iraq. Where will it be when I retire? By that time Soscial Security will probably have been cancelled or merged into the general budget or turned into a welfare program. I really don't understand why you would defend a regressive tax that allows congress to avoid having to be accountable for what it spends.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]